| Description |
xviii, 266 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Contents |
Pt. 1. The City of Today. 1. The Birth of Cities. 2. You Can't Throw Anything Away: Limits on the Urban Ecosystem. 3. The Fabric of Cities. 4. Letting the Light In. 5. What Goes Up Must Come Down-Eventually: How a Building Works. 6. Of Snails and Subways: The Urban Infrastructure. 7. Moving Energy: Getting Things Done. 8. Transportation: How Energy Shapes a City. 9. Moving Information: Bits and Pixels -- Pt. 2. The City of the Future. 10. Predicting the Future. 11. The High-Rise Future. 12. The Edge City Future. 13. The New Suburban Future. 14. The Virtual Future. 15. The Future in Space. 16. The Death of Cities -- Afterword: The City in 2050 |
| Summary |
From an explanation of the evolution and influence of plate glass and reinforced steel to an analysis of the future of the skyscraper, A SCIENTIST IN THE CITY offers a fascinating study of the promise and the consequences of technology in our everyday urban lives. In addition, Trefil goes on to explore how the new technologies being developed today will help to determine the changing forms that cities will take in the future. A SCIENTIST IN THE CITY is the kind of book that will open our eyes to the man-made world around us, and show us some of the scientific rea sons for why we live the way we do |
|
In his previous books, A Scientist at the Seashore and Meditations at Sunset, James Trefil used common place settings in the natural world as a point of departure for probing the mysteries of nature. In A SCIENTIST IN THE CITY, Trefil takes the opposite tack, looking at the quintessential man-made environment of the city as a way of examining the forces that define our world. What does the heating system of a building or the construction of a bridge tell us about the development of the city? What does the amplified environmental stress of city life on plants and animals suggest about the wild? How have scientific advances in building materials and an understanding of the structure of the atom helped to shape the cities of today? |
| Notes |
Includes index |
| Subject |
City and town life.
|
|
Technology -- Social aspects.
|
|
City and town life.
|
| LC no. |
93024961 |
| ISBN |
0385247974 |
|
